World leader?The first paragraphs highlighted Britain's leading role in the 19th century development of telegraphy, going on to say once again that the UK "faces the question of how best to maintain its position as one of the world leaders in electronic communications".

We do not have even the one percent of connections that would qualify us to "sit on the bench with Bulgaria", as my Community Broadband Network colleague, Adrian Wooster, commented. It really is lamentable. Not only are Japan, South Korea, the US and China ahead of us, but so are Latvia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Portugal and Bulgaria.

But what of the vaunted competition between BT and Virgin Media to roll out superfast broadband? BT is aiming to deliver some fibre to the home as part of its plans, but the bulk of its rollout will be fibre to street cabinets and copper from there, delivering VSDL services. Virgin is offering an equivalent technology, Docsis 3.

Essential factsAn Ofcom speaker at February's FTTH Conference said this means Britain has 50 percent next-generation access coverage and so is doing very well. Perhaps. But only if you discount several key facts: BT and Virgin are largely competing for customers on the same territory; both technologies are heavily contended and heavily asymmetric, which means lower upstream bandwidth; and even more frustratingly for consumers, since VDSL is very distance-sensitive, we face the prospect of 'up to' speed offerings from ISPs for years to come.

Fibre to the cabinet is effectively the last throw of the dice for copper-based technologies. Outside the UK, this truth seems to have been accepted, judging by the major investments being made in fibre to the home. Other countries recognise that global competitiveness demands world-class connectivity.

While fibre-to-the-cabinet services may give us a temporary competitive equivalence with other countries, in the long run it is an approach that cannot compete with full fibre solutions, either in terms of bandwidth and therefore future services, or in terms of operational costs for operators.

In the UK, it seems we are still suffering from the delusion that fibre to the cabinet offering perhaps 40Mbps — if we are lucky enough to be offered such a product — will somehow put us on a level playing field with business in, say, the Netherlands, which can enjoy perhaps 1Gbps symmetric connectivity.

The issues are political and the election is looming, so here is what I would like to see in the next-generation broadband manifesto:

1. Obtain global rankingLet's get the UK into the global rankings with at least one percent of homes and businesses connected direct to fibre within a year. That goal would mean about 250,000 connections — around 247,000 more than we have now, according to Point Topic.

Tall order? Yes. But if we fail to inject a sense of ambition and urgency into the debate, we will still be talking, rather than doing, for years to come. We need to get off the starting blocks. Fibre is the answer, the only questions are timing, cost and who pays.